


Remember Me

by the_random_writer



Series: Separated Twins [1]
Category: Bourne (Movies), RED (Movies), The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
Genre: Brothers, CIA, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Crossover, FSB, Family Issues, Family Secrets, Gen, Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-15 10:05:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4602645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_random_writer/pseuds/the_random_writer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A crossover where William Cooper from 'RED' and Kirill from 'The Bourne Supremacy' are identical twins.</p>
<p>Born in Berlin to an American mother and a Russian father, the twins were separated at the age of ten by their parents' divorce. William went to the United States with their mother, while Kirill went to the Soviet Union with their father.</p>
<p>Kirill survived the car crash in Moscow, and ended up in the custody of the CIA. When Pamela Landy ran his name through the agency's systems, she found the note in William Cooper's personal file, and realized all was not as it seemed.</p>
<p>Takes place in early January 2010.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remember Me

"Agent Cooper, why didn't you tell us about your brother?"

William dropped his gaze from the commanding, elegant blonde to examine the personnel file she had calmly placed on the table between them. He scanned the name printed in bold on the front cover, sighed quietly and closed his eyes. It was a name from the dim and distant past, but a name he knew all too well.

Kirill Alexandrovich Orlov. His younger brother and identical twin, his missing other half. The sibling who had vanished from his life completely, without warning and literally overnight, almost thirty years ago. The sibling he'd been told was dead, but had recently discovered was very much in the land of the living, much to his amazement and shock. And now, somehow, even though he'd kept it almost completely to himself, that discovery had come to the attention of the CIA.

It bothered him slightly that someone as senior as Pamela Landy was the person posing the question, especially since she worked in a completely different department. If this was serious enough to warrant a Section Chief's involvement, why the hell had they gone to her, instead of someone from his own group? Someone more familiar with his abilities and his professional record? Someone such as McNamara, who knew just how good he was at his job and how many times he'd risked his life to keep the Company's secrets safe? Hell, even that arrogant asshole Carrington would do in a pinch.

Unfortunately, his own group was still in flux in the wake of Cynthia's mysterious and scandalous death (which he still _officially_ knew nothing about). Carrington and McNamara were probably both far too busy cleaning up the hellish, complicated mess she'd apparently left behind. Until the shock waves from her 'departure' settled and her replacement was appointed, going to an unbiased outsider probably made more sense.

Besides, he'd heard only excellent things about this particular Section Chief, so even though she didn't know him, he was probably in safe hands. She was said to be as tough as nails but also scrupulously fair. That was an unusual mix for the CIA, where plenty of people knew how to be tough but fair was sometimes thin on the ground, especially up on the sixth and seventh floors. Landy had at least decided to meet with him in person, and to give him a chance to explain his silence, which he took as an encouraging sign. He knew now that the dearly departed Agent Wilkes would never have been so forgiving. She would have taken one look at the contents of his brother's file, locked him out of his accounts and quietly thrown him to the wolves. A fact which made him feel _slightly_ less guilty about putting a bullet through her heart.

If Landy's presence in the room surprised him, the question she had asked did not. Well, maybe a little bit. But not much. Only insofar as it was finally being asked. He was frankly amazed it had taken the agency this long to realize he was hiding something. Something it had a right and a need to know because it made him a potential risk. He'd been waiting for someone from Internal Affairs to put the pieces of the puzzle together and confront him about his secret every day for the last four months. Ever since his trip to London last September, when an old and trusted friend from the SIS Moscow Station who knew his unusual family story told him the truth about his brother. That Kirill was not dead, as he'd previously been advised, but very much alive, living in the Russian capital and earning a comfortable living in an ominously familiar way.

All things considered, he'd reacted to Nigel's revelations about as well as could be expected. Finding out his twin was alive had been a terrible but wonderful shock. Finding out that he and Kirill shared a dark and sometimes violent profession as well as a set of genes had troubled him beyond words, and left him in need of a double measure of twenty-year-old Edradour. What did it say about them as human beings, and what did it mean for his own son and daughter, that despite being raised a continent apart, in two completely different worlds by two completely different parents, he and his sibling had ended up on more or less the same path? And not a respectable path, into a nice, normal, boring career. They hadn't separately developed the urge to become the world's richest dentist, or most innovative engineer. They'd both become soldiers, highly skilled and capable killers, men who could be relied upon to solve their employers' annoying problems with a minimum of fuss and noise.

So much for nurture overcoming nature. It was probably as well their mother was dead. The knowledge of what her sons had become would have broken her gentle heart.

William knew he was in very serious trouble. The CIA's disclosure rules were absolutely, totally clear. He should have gone to talk to Wilkes as soon as he returned from London. He should have told her all about the resurrected Russian brother working for the FSB. But he'd kept his discovery to himself, and not just because he'd been worried it would damage his security clearance and render him too hot to use on all but the safest and dullest of tasks. Finding out that Kirill had not died in an accident in his teens, but was actually alive and well and living a good life in Moscow, had brought up a lot of memories, good and bad. He'd been in no mood or condition to share them with anyone except his wife, and even that had been a strain. Just thinking about the whole sorry situation now, with Pamela Landy sitting quietly across the table, was enough to re-open the wounds.

********************

He remembered living in West Berlin, several blocks away from the wall, next to a park with a musical clock and a statue of a standing bear. Kirill once managed to climb up onto the bear's head, but slipped and fell on the way down, earning himself a badly broken arm for his efforts. The subsequent trip to the _Notaufnahme_  to have the arm fixed and set in a cast was the most exciting event of the year.

He remembered sharing a bedroom in a cozy rental apartment, and arguing constantly with his twin in a boisterous blend of English, German and mangled Russian, about who owned which toy, who had made what mess or whose turn it was to sleep in the top bunk.

He remembered playing rough and tumble games in the garden behind the building, especially Cops and Robbers. For some reason never discussed or challenged, he was always the gun-wielding Cop and Kirill was always the devious Robber.

He remembered the pleasure he took from being the older brother by all of fourteen minutes. His attempts to use his exalted status to order Kirill around drove his sensitive younger sibling either into a stony silence or a screaming, punching, kicking rage. The tantrums were extremely impressive but never lasted very long. For all that Kirill was quick to anger, he was even quicker to forgive and forget.

He remembered their parents calling them Eagle One and Eagle Two; a play on their famous Russian surname, and in hindsight, a darkly ironic nod to the profession they would eventually share. He used 'Eagle' or 'Baldy' as his call-sign when he was in the Marines, even though by then, the nicknames no longer applied.

He remembered going out for the day with his mother to visit some family friends, and returning later in the evening to discover his father and brother had gone away on a long trip. It was only a few weeks later, when there was still no sign of their return, that his mother finally told him they were never coming back.

He remembered his mother's absolute, unbending silence; how she refused to talk to him about what had happened in Berlin once they were living in the United States, even years later, when he screamed and shouted at her that he was old enough to understand.

He remembered feeling lost and confused when his mother changed his legal name from William Orlov to William Cooper. It was a sensible decision, given the year and where they were living, but it severed his only remaining link to his missing father and brother.

He remembered ruining a Thanksgiving dinner and making his Oma Johanna cry by telling a room full of his Cooper relations that he didn't care if he had a twin and was happy to be an only child. He knew he was being cruel, but he was trying to demonstrate to his mother that he could play the denial game just as skilfully as her.

He remembered his mother dying of a cerebral haemorrhage in her sleep a few weeks before he was due to leave for Boot Camp at Parris Island. Everything she knew about his twin, and all of the conversations they were still supposed to have about him, went with her to the grave.

He remembered finding no trace of Kirill in his mother's personal belongings, to the point where he began to believe his brother had never been born. No Christmas cards, no letters, no school reports, no drawings, no photos of a growing boy somewhere in the USSR. He realized then how hard it must have been for her, to never know what Kirill looked like, but at the same time, to see him in her home every day.

He remembered the five new brothers he found in the Marines; men he fought, killed and on one occasion, almost died for. He grew to love all of them as if they were his own blood, but he never told any of them about his twin. They were American marines to the core and Kirill was a Russian stranger. He was never sure they would understand.

He remembered being on front gate duty at the US embassy in Vienna in December 1991, chatting to one of the other marines about the imminent end of the USSR, wondering how it might impact _him_ , and hoping that Kirill, wherever he was, would figure out a way to survive.

He remembered receiving a letter from a Moscow investigation service, advising him that, sadly, his brother had died in a car crash more than a decade before. He mourned for Kirill as much as he could, given the circumstances, then put the entire matter very firmly behind him. It never once occurred to him to doubt the contents of the letter, or to question how competently the company had done its job.

He remembered feeling thrilled and relieved when Michelle discovered she was pregnant five months before their wedding. It gave them a good excuse to elope, and to avoid an ostentatious social occasion that would only highlight the absence of his parents and brother. It took until Tatiana's birth for his in-laws to completely forgive him, but that was a price he was willing to pay.

He remembered holding his new-born son and finally understanding why his mother had never wanted to talk to him about his twin. Contrary to what he'd always believed, she wasn't punishing him for not being Kirill or deliberately ignoring his pain. She was simply trying to cope with the horrible, lingering, soul-wrenching grief of permanently losing her younger child.

He remembered sitting in the bar of the Millennium Hotel in London, in the very room where Alexander Litvinenko drank his radioactive tea, staring at some photos of Kirill taken a few weeks before. He can see his brother is a dangerous and determined man who's willing to kill to get what he wants, but no longer has his childish temper, or his childish ability to forgive and forget.

He remembered going back to his room, texting Michelle to tell her he loved her and the children very much, then emptying the contents of the bar and gradually drinking himself to sleep.

********************

He wondered how Landy had found out the truth. After all, the number of people in the world who knew his twin was still alive and working for the FSB could be counted on one hand. It obviously hadn't come from him, and he trusted Michelle with their children's lives, never mind his family secrets. Had his friend in Moscow spilled the beans to an SIS colleague with Langley connections, even though he'd solemnly promised to keep his mouth firmly shut? William sincerely hoped not. If he had, it would mean the end of their ten-year friendship for sure.

But what if he was looking at this through the wrong end of the scope? This might have nothing to do with Nigel, or their meeting in London last September. The Company might have learned about Kirill from a completely separate source. He'd heard the water cooler rumours about Landy's recent trip to Moscow, apparently to handle an expensive, squalid, off-the-books mess involving a man named Bourne. Kirill lived in that very city, and worked for the Russian equivalent of the FBI. Had his twin done something during the trip to bring himself to Landy's attention, in either a good or a bad way? Had someone on her task force team who'd previously worked at HQ with  _him_  come into contact with his brother, noticed the obvious resemblance and quietly raised a red alert? Kirill's name was in his own file, along with a copy of the (obviously erroneous) death notice letter. Even the greenest of rookies would have been able to join the dots, and Pamela Landy was no half-trained rookie.

But if that was how she'd discovered Kirill, why had she questioned him in such a censorious tone, as if she knew full well he'd done something very wrong? What in the seven hells was going on?

Fuck it. At the end of the day, it didn't matter how or when the Company had figured it out. The Russian genie was well and truly out of the bottle, and regardless of who had released it, he couldn't put it back. Besides, for all that it might be about to cause him some serious professional problems, having his secret finally come to light was also an enormous relief. Maybe now he could take action on something he'd only been able to think about for the last four months. Maybe now he could find a way to contact Kirill and speak to his missing twin for the first time in twenty-eight years. It would no doubt be fraught with complications, given their nationalities and respective employers, but surely not impossible in this era of WebEx and Skype. Nigel had already offered to lend a hand however he could, but William was somewhat reluctant to take the Englishman up on his offer, at least until he knew all the facts. Ivan Simonov still owed him a favour for cleaning up the aftermath of the business in Chicago with Frank. He'd mentioned in passing that he had some influential friends in Russia, so perhaps he would be able to help.

Assuming, of course, that Kirill even wanted to talk. The fact that, to the best of his knowledge, his brother had never once coming looking for him wasn't exactly an encouraging sign. What if Kirill had long since decided that he didn't want to be reunited with his twin and would rather leave the past alone? According to Nigel's investigations, his brother had served in a highly secretive Spetsnaz unit prior to signing on initially with the SVR, then later with the FSB. Was the incorrect report of his death really a bureaucratic error, or was it something Kirill had done himself in an elaborate effort to cover his tracks?

As troubling as all of those questions were, finding the answers would have to wait. First, he had to make sure his week wasn't going to end with his resignation, or even worse, his immediate termination with cause. The former would knock him back a couple of steps, but the latter would cause more serious damage, and might even force him out of the intelligence profession for good. Michelle's advice to him on the matter of her birthday present had been to 'surprise her', but somehow, he doubted that losing his job at the CIA was what she'd had in mind. If he could just make Landy understand how hard the last four months had been for him, and why he'd kept the news about Kirill to himself instead of sharing it with the CIA, perhaps he could save what was left of his career.

He opened his eyes and took a deep breath. He hoped Landy was free for the rest of the day because this was going to take some time.

"Let me tell you about my brother," he told her in a quiet voice. "Let me tell you about Kiryusha."


End file.
